Reactor assemblies are known in the art for e.g. testing optimal reaction conditions for chemical reactions, including biological and pharmacological processes, such as testing the pharmacological activity of a test compound, the activity of a catalyst or enzyme, optimal reaction parameters etc. E.g. WO 99/64160 (herein incorporated by reference) describes a reactor assembly of the above-mentioned kind for testing and/or screening a collection of compounds in order to find the optimal reaction conditions and performance of the said compounds. As the reactor assembly is designed for testing and or screening purposes and not for production purposes, the reactor outlets are connected to an analyser, wherein the effluent stream from the reactor is analysed.
In practice, many different analysers are used for testing and/or screening purposes, such as a gas chromatograph (GC), chromatography devices, such as chromatography columns, in particular high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), optical defraction measuring devices, mass spectrograph, etc.
For testing and/or screening purposes, the reactor assemblies are chosen to be as small as possible in size in view of saving material to be tested, energy, etc. However, numerous problems often occur when using reactor assemblies known in the art. When e.g. the composition of a reaction mixture is to be analysed, the composition of the effluent of the reaction zone is analysed and compared to the composition of the stream entering the reaction zone, e.g. after and before the reaction, respectively. To accurately assess the reaction performance, e.g. the exact mass balance of the in- and outgoing components are to be calculated. Especially when analysing a small amount of effluent stream, in particular when operating with a liquid flow rate of less than 1.0 ml/min/reactor, in particular less than 0.5 ml/min, and/or a gas flow rate of less than 100 Nml/min/reactor, in particular less than 50 Nml/min/reactor as is often the case in so called high-throughput experimentation as described in WO 99/64160, it has been proven to be very difficult to analyse the composition of the effluent stream in an accurate manner. The term “Nml” means the volume of the gas at 1 atm and 20° C. The accuracy of the analyses tends to be more difficult when smaller amounts of effluent stream are available for analyses. It has e.g. been found that a significant amount of effluent stream may remain in the reaction chamber, e.g. due to adhesion of one or more of the components, present in the effluent stream, to the wall of the reaction chamber, leading to measurement inaccuracies. Further this may also cause an undesired time delay between the moment the efficient stream leaves the reaction zone and the moment the reactants of the said steam arrive at an analyser, which is highly undesired for high-throughput experimentation. Further, it is not possible to conduct accurate measurements on e.g. concentration, fluxes and production rate when a small amount of effluent stream is available for analyses.
A particular problem occurs when dealing with gas/liquid mixtures exiting the reactor, especially when dealing with the low flow rates as mentioned above. Gas/liquid separation, which is essential for subsequent analysis of both phases, is very difficult on the small flows to be separated. The reason behind this is the fact that a gas liquid separator for these small flows has to be small as well to avoid unnecessary hold-up of the products to be analysed. The small dimensions of such G/L separators will cause adhesive forces such as capillary force and surface tension effects to dominate over gravity, and as such will hinder easy separation based on gravity.